Technology

Hello everyone!

On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week, a great deal of my time (and Beth's) was spent producing a booklet about the World Youth Day Scholarship Program being offered by the Catholic chaplaincies at USyd, UTS, Macquarie University, and the University of New South Wales (UNSW). It's a really great opportunity - you volunteer for 156 hours at your home chaplaincy, and in return, they give you half your fare to WYD 2011 in Madrid on a 19 day pilgrimage that includes a trip to the Holy Land, led by Sydney's own Cardinal Pell. Each uni will have 2 student volunteers. Its a pretty lengthy application, but so worth it!

A similar program is being offered in a number of parishes looking for help with youth ministry, and Beth was given the task of adapting the information booklet they used to fit the chaplaincy programs. In addition to figuring out how the program would work, she also had to edit/adapt a booklet created in InDesign without actually having a copy of the software herself. Thus began a messy cycle of 30 day free trials, learning to use a new program, formatting issues, printing issues, and a new copy machine with a few kinks left to work out. At one point this week, Daniel Hill put a little sign up over the copier that said, "Printer: 1 Beth: 0," and on Thursday, Sr. Mary Barbara was prompted to bless the copier with holy water after some particularly unpredictable behavior. At long last, however, we triumphed and the project is done!

Today, Katherine from Macquarie came to pick up their application packets and I got a little bit of an insight into their chaplaincy. They have a much smaller space than the JPII center, so there is not much space for students to gather/hang out. In addition, she said their relationship with the university has been deteriorating, making it really difficult for them to advertise or book space for their event. For example, she said that Bishop Porteous, the auxiliary bishop of Sydney, is going to speak at Macquarie next week but, as of today, there is still no place for him to give his talk! I think hearing that made everyone thankful for the resources we do have at the JPII center and the relatively smooth relationship that the chaplaincy has with the university, even if interaction with its students can get a little rocky sometimes.

On Wednesday evening, I started auditing a Christology course with Jessica, Lauren, and Srs. Maria Cecilia and Mary Barbara. It was mostly introductory material and a short lecture on Christ in the Old Testament, but the professor seemed very passionate and knowledgeable, so I think it should be a very worthwhile addition to my time here. I found the bit of Christology that we covered in my Intro to Aquinas course this past semester quite fascinating, so I'm interested to learn more, even though I won't be able to get the benefit of the whole course. The sisters and I have been collaborating in our efforts to learn Australian lingo; on Wednesday, we learned that "revising" is actually code for reviewing. Knowing this makes the following sentence make a lot more sense: "During the last lecture, we will probably spend most of the time revising what we've been learning all term."

Things are very quiet at the chaplaincy on Fridays, so I left early today and explored a little bit of the city. First, I walked to Chinatown (which is quite close to the university area) to see what that was like. There is a main pedestrian market area that is all done up with Chinese decor, but a quick look around was all I needed. Afterward, I walked to the Powerhouse Museum, where I spent the rest of the afternoon.

On my original list of places to visit in Sydney, the Powerhouse Museum hadn't made the cut, but since I go by it twice every day on the bus, I decided that I needed to see what it had inside. Basically, the Powerhouse Museum is all about technology and innovation, and I was quite happy that I went.

I saw a number of exhibits: Australian inventions past and present, several planes, the first train to arrive in New South Wales, a number of different steam powered machines (water heaters, manufacturing equipment, a carousel), the oldest surviving steam engine with a moving well from a textile mill in England, an exhibit on the advances made in computers over the years, and an exhibit about shopping in Australia, focusing on a general store run by English immigrants around the turn of the century.

I also enjoyed an exhibit on various decorative arts movements including quite a bit of arts and crafts era and contemporary and modern pieces that included furniture, jewelry, clothing, and other decorations. I particularly enjoyed seeing these as a result of the projects we did on the various decorative arts movements in my Dimensions of Art class with Dr. Grace last fall.

There was also a photo gallery called "Trainspotting" with the finalists from an international train-related photo competition sponsored by the museum. There were some really great photos; captured in the right ways, trains can be absolutely beautiful. There was photo that I particularly liked taken by man named Martin from Bratislava, Slovakia. I couldn't help wondering if this was the same Martin who was our tour guide in Bratislava last March, because he seemed like the type of person who would a) take great photos and b) enter a competition like this. Even though I'll probably never know for sure, I'm going to pretend it was him.

The main exhibit right now is called "The 80s are Back!" Now, even though I was only alive for the last 9 months of the 1980s, it is still a bit weird to see an exhibit in a museum about the decade in which you were born. I'm not that old! The exhibit was pretty neat though - lots of funky clothing and posters, old computers, and SO MUCH PACMAN. I won't lie, I spent a few minutes playing at one of the little table top games they had set up.

I love museums. My only real complaint about the Powerhouse Museum was that the gift shop didn't have any cool pens. I was really in the mood for a cool pen, and the gift shop had lots of cool gadgets (LIKE MASSIVE PINK ERASERS), but it had no pens. Honestly. Nevertheless, it was a great afternoon, made even sweeter by my triumph over the WYD project in the morning.

Once I got home, I helped Jessica and Lauren make dinner. It was a pasta and shrimp creation similar to what we made for the sisters last week, except this time Jessica added huge chunks of fresh feta, which was fine by me!